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Apple really needs to let us listen to music directly from the watch's built-in speaker

2

212rikanmofo

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 31, 2003
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The audio quality of the built-in speaker on series 4 is quite remarkable and it's such a shame that we can't listen to music from it. Some people say its due to battery drain, but then again wouldn't it be the same when we stream music from the watch to a bluetooth speaker or airpods?

If the problem lies with the battery, then I seriously hope they will come up with some optimizations or improved battery technology to allow us to do this. Since we can't bring our phones into work. I would love to be able to listen to music directly from my watch.

There's an app called mmplayer pro I believe that allows this, but it hasn't been updated in a few years and it's not really ideal, so I'm hoping for a better implementation of this, hopefully really soon! series 6 maybe? or through a software update if possible.
 
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Bluetooth speakers, AirPods, etc. have their own independent power source.

I believe the tiny battery life in the WATCH would be crushed after one hour of music on a low quality speaker, especially if you’re streaming on cellular, rendering the full user experience awful and not worth it.
 
I mean have the music files actually synced and stored locally on your watch and play it that way and not streamed. If the Shazam app allows you to play 30 second clips, then I'm sure it's possible. This is a highly requested feature.
 
It's highly unlikely that Apple would expose us to low quality audio output through a speaker that was designed to play notiifications and not music audio.

I believe it happened once during a beta of an earlier watchOS that you could play through the speaker but it was quickly disabled prior to launch.
 
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I'm not won over by that assertion, I have a S5 and I think the iPhone Xs speaker is better quality and a more viable product to want to play music from directly.

I'm also not convinced that it's a highly requested feature. Apple, would imagine, aren't going to launch a feature which is highly impractical and doesn't have a use case beyond a quick show off to other users.

The main reasons for using the speaker would surely be on the basis of allowing multiple people to hear the audio and on a (comparatively) low quality and low volume speaker why would you do this?
 
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212rikanmofo said:
it's not low quality at all. It's on par with my iPhone XS Max. I'm talking about series 4.
Click to expand...

I also have a S4 and Xs Max, and I disagree about a dozen times over. The two are not even close to comparable regarding the sound quality.

The WATCH speaker would be fine for podcasts/spoken word only, but even then, I believe the battery and user experience would suffer tremendously.
 
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I can already imagine hundreds of tweets complaining that the battery life is awful after hour of playing music on Apple Watch speaker
 
And why would they hold up the audio quality of the speaker for playing music when the use case is poor... I don't imagine 4 friends sitting around one person's watch cracking tinnies and not talking whilst the music is playing because of the volume.

Thinking it might be cool and it being a compelling use case that everybody wants are totally different things.
 
212rikanmofo said:
I mean have the music files actually synced and stored locally on your watch and play it that way and not streamed. If the Shazam app allows you to play 30 second clips, then I'm sure it's possible. This is a highly requested feature.
Click to expand...

I'm fairly certain you can store music on your watch and play it without streaming over Bluetooth/Wifi/Cellular from your phone or the internet.

It does have to be played over headphones connected to your watch though, not on the watch's speakers.
 
Not so much about Music but it‘d be great to play podcast not he speaker. But agree with the others that battery life is likelay affected. Is there a jailbreak on the watch?
 
212rikanmofo said:
The audio quality of the built-in speaker on series 4 is quite remarkable and it's such a shame that we can't listen to music from it. Some people say its due to battery drain, but then again wouldn't it be the same when we stream music from the watch to a bluetooth speaker or airpods?

If the problem lies with the battery, then I seriously hope they will come up with some optimizations or improved battery technology to allow us to do this. Since we can't bring our phones into work. I would love to be able to listen to music directly from my watch.

There's an app called mmplayer pro I believe that allows this, but it hasn't been updated in a few years and it's not really ideal, so I'm hoping for a better implementation of this, hopefully really soon! series 6 maybe? or through a software update if possible.
Click to expand...

I don't think I would use the feature, however it does seem like something that shouldn't be crippled by Apple.
 
Maybe I'm just old fashioned but why on earth would anyone want to blast their music on everyone in public? I hate that. Get some AirPods or Bluetooth/wired headphones and keep your tastes to yourself!

As much as I miss the 80s one thing I never will miss are the 'ghetto blasters' with their huge boomboxes on their shoulders blasting away neighborhoods with garbage.
 
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There are various reasons why people would want this feature. On my original watch I could do it until Apple restricted what I could do with a product I bought.

One night I had to rush my partner to hospital - obviously worrying about whether I had a phone with me was unimportant and I forgot it. I had to wait for hours outside ( think waiting area was full) and wanted some distraction. I had podcasts on my watch but no way to listen to them.

Yes Apple Watch is not a great way to listen to music - I have a top flight HiFi for that, but I can’t put that in my pocket or on my wrist so I am happy to slum it in exceptional circumstances.

And to those that say it will impact battery life, yes probably, but surely using the watch for anything impacts battery life, and don’t we buy it to use it?
 
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